Conceptualising domestic energy service business models: a typology and policy recommendations

Energy service business models (ESBMs) are potentially critical to reducing household energy demand and mitigating climate change. These models are predicated on a shift from the ‘throughput’ sale of energy commodities, towards providing ‘useful’ or ‘final’ energy services. However, the conceptual delineation of these models and their different variants remains opaque in the literature. In this paper, we seek to bring clarification to this issue through the identification of a typology of ESBMs. Through a series of 53 interviews and 7 stakeholder workshops we explore contemporary domestic ESBM examples in Europe. We find that while more basic energy supply contracts are commonplace, models which deliver energy saving performance or final energy services are rarer. We subsequently identify barriers to the adoption of these business models, before proposing 13 policy recommendations. We conclude that the ‘energy throughput orthodoxy’ which has governed liberalised energy markets will need to be challenged for these models to have a significant future impact.